


And All That Remains

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode: s08e07 Kill the Moon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:45:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2413754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a hole in her living room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All That Remains

**Author's Note:**

> Kill the Moon killed me. I had to write something with my feelings and this is what happened. This isn't exactly a fix it, but it's what I like to imagine for them.

There's a hole in her living room. 

Not a literal hole, mind, not this time, but it’s a hole nonetheless. It’s a space. It feels empty. And she knows there will be no blue box filling it any time soon.

She’s fighting the tears even hours later, laying in her bed and staring out the window. It was her choice, and she believes it was the right one, because even he said he always trusts her to make the right choice.

The irony is not the least bit lost on her.

She gets it, though; it’s not as if she entirely disagreed with him. He’s always in charge, always making decisions for people, and the one time he decides to step back and let humanity be humanity, let them make their own way in the universe because the outcome is too cloudy for even a Time Lord to see properly, he still cocks it up. In one breath he tells them he can’t help, can’t make this choice for them, and then makes a choice for her anyway by leaving her there. In that moment she really knew him for who he was, saw what others must see.

He left her.

And she did not believe in him anymore.

 

 

 

 

He’s finally done it.

He needs her and he’s lost her and he doesn’t understand why. He thinks he used to be better at this, used to understand their humanity more, used to have more of it himself. But that was before... many things.

There was a moment, when he’d been traveling alone for so long, hundreds of years maybe, that he promised himself he wouldn’t let anyone in again, wouldn’t let himself get that close. He’d done it before, done it too many times - Barbara, Jo, Sarah Jane, and more names he can’t and won’t say again, not even when he’s the only living thing for five hundred million light years and five hundred million eons in either direction. He especially won’t say _her_ name, _can’t_ say her name. That would open a wound he closed too long and too soon ago.

(He remembers, though, how _that_ him was just for _her_ , pink and yellow and all his because somehow the universe had given him this one thing for too short a time.)

And really he should have known better.

He’s got two hearts and it only ever feels like one of them is working and the other is busy being hopelessly in love with them all, with their perfect human-ness and the way they gasped that first time they stepped in the TARDIS, the way their eyes get so big and bright the first time he shows them a star being born right out of another dying.

That used to be him too, he remembers, but he is not that man anymore.

Maybe, he was only ever fooling himself that he could be again. Or could have been, with Clara.

Either way, she is gone, and he could be a million places in a second, except the only place he wants to be is a cupboard in Coal Hill, or the living room of her flat. He’d leaf through all of her books and leave them lying wherever he felt like, on the table, in the refrigerator, in the little rack in her shower. She’d get mad, but he’d make tea, and tell her he just stopped by because he need her for a very important thing. There was always a thing that needed doing somewhere, somewhen.

Or maybe he’d show up and park the TARDIS half blocking the door to her bedroom because watching her squeeze through the small space and give him that endearing, exasperated look made every Wednesday his favorite day.

He moves around the console, pulls the display towards him, and it’s just as he suspected. 

It’s Wednesday again.

 

 

 

 

Five Wednesdays pass and she catches herself still looking, still waiting. She walks by the storage room at Coal Hill every day. Sometimes she stops and listens, sometimes she puts her hand to the door and steels herself against what she really wants to do. Once, just once, she went inside, stood in the space where it would be, where he should be.

The sixth Wednesday, she walks straight past it without a glance and calls it progress.

Danny walks her home after dinner, and though he knows something is wrong, he doesn’t ask. Maybe he’s afraid of the answer, afraid to hear that she’s still angry and that means she’s still not over it, over him. Or maybe he really does know how she feels because he’s not over it either. She kisses him goodnight and doesn’t ask him to come up, watching him as he smiles and walks away, back down the dimly lit street.

She looks up at the sky and sighs, closes her eyes, and tries not to hear the sound her heart wants to hear.

The moon is still unnervingly bright.

 

 

 

 

He lasts one hundred and twenty seven days.

One hundred and twenty seven days since he was even in the vague vicinity of Earth.

One hundred and twenty seven days of absolutely _not_ saying her name in his head or remembering her smile.

One hundred and twenty seven days of staring at the sweater she left on his chair.

 

 

 

 

Her key slides into the lock and then she hears it, the groan, the whoosh, the little thud at the end, and she freezes. Her heart is in her throat and for a moment she almost turns and runs. But this is her flat and how very dare he -

The door opens and her flat is oddly quiet. She half expects him to be standing there, looking like nothing had happened, ready to whisk her off to someplace like it was any other day for them. But he isn’t there and it still feels empty. She wonders if she’d imagined the whole thing.

On her bed is a red sweater she hasn’t seen in months.

There’s a spot on the sleeve, grease or something, she remembers. He’d been under the console, gangly legs stretched out over the walkway, the rest of him folded into the impossible small space (was everything bigger on the inside in the TARDIS?). 

There were wires hanging down, brushing the end of his nose, and he kept batting them away, scowling like they should mind their own business and go away. She was sitting next to him on the floor and without thinking she’d reached in and held the wires away. They said nothing to each other, but the feeling of his breath on in the inside of her wrist as he worked makes her rub the skin there even now.

He was here. He left. Again.

She is still angry.

They are not finished.

 

 

 

 

He gets it. 

(He doesn’t get it.) 

He shouldn’t have left, but he knew she would do the right thing, whatever that thing was. He really didn’t know what would happen. He hates that, hates the grey areas, the blurry spots. They make his brain itch, and the more he tries to see them, tries to make sense of them, the further away everything gets.

Now he’s so far from her that everything is grey and blurry.

 

 

 

 

She forgets.

About the sweater, about the moon, about his eyes, about all the times he left her.

She remembers.

It’s the weather, maybe, or the first sip of her morning coffee, and she thinks about bow ties, long coats, a flash of red, and how much younger he seems when he smiles.

“Clara.”

She hears him, behind her, and her eyes close for moment, part of her hoping that when she turns around he won’t be there at all. But he is. She is somehow not surprised.

“I told you to go,” she says, simply.

“I know.” He shifts from one foot to the other, glances at the ground and then back to her. “And I came back.”

She wants to laugh because he sounds excited, and his eyes lifted a little like he just told her needed her for a thing, a very big thing, and oh, there’s fish people too.

He takes a step towards her and she doesn’t back away, so he thinks that maybe that’s a good sign.

“Doctor -”

Her arms are crossed and she’s got that look. He hates that look.

He shrugs. “I’m sorry.”

“What?” Her eyes narrow.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, louder and clearer this time, and takes another step. He wants to reach for her, wants to feel her hand in his again even if it’s only long enough for her to step into the TARDIS.

Clara shakes her head. “You’re sorry?” His fingers fidget at his sides and he seems impossibly small, like a nervous little boy. “You don’t even know what you’re sorry _for_.”

“No,” the Doctor agrees, and swallows against the lump that’s been in his throat for three days. “But I’m sure you can tell me.”

She tenses and turns away from him. Everything feels like it’s spinning and turning about her, waiting on her to make a decision. There’s a tiny part of her, fractional really, that is excited, even happy to see him again. She doesn’t like that feeling, doesn’t want it, it’s not the right feeling to have. She doesn’t know where that puts her.

She jumps when she feels him standing right behind her, his hand rising to her shoulder, but only just barely, hovering over her like he’s still so afraid.

His hand falls as she turns to face him, and he’s watching her with that look, the one that pulls her in because if she waits long enough he opens just for a moment, and she can see who he used to be.

“I returned your sweater.”

He says it like he’d say 'I made tea.'

“I know.” She nods. “And then you left.”

“Yes.”

“Again.”

It’s his turn to nod. He gets it. (He doesn’t.) But he’s trying, he _will_ try, for her.

“I’m still mad at you,” she says a moment later, and with that she can feel him pull away again. She won’t let him.

“Yes.”

She thinks he might actually mean it, all of it, this 'best apology she’s likely to ever get out of him' thing, and he just sounds so lonely, like he’s reaching for her and hoping she might reach back. He startles when she leans forward and wraps her arms around him, but for once he doesn’t try to move away. There’s nerves, anticipation, and he doesn’t know what to do with his arms so he just puts them around her, and, to his surprise, it feels like the very right thing to do.

She feels warm and small in his arms, and he remembers what it’s like to let someone in, for just a moment. He also remembers what it’s like on the other side of that too, when they’ve gone and it’s just him and his box and time.

She lets her eyes close for just a moment. “If you ever - _ever_ \- leave me again -” 

Her voice breaks with the weight of everything, every week, every day, every passing moment she stood in her living room and stared at empty space.

“I know,” he replies. “I won’t -”

“Shut up,” she says into his shirt, squeezing his middle one more time.

He lets himself have this moment, just once, and drops his head to hers, letting his nose push into her hair just a little. “Yes, boss.”

 

 

 

 

Later, her sweater, a different one, is back on his chair.

“You’re staring,” she says.

He takes a long stride around the console to flip a switch, and her fingers curl around the railing.

“Are we going to talk?” he asks, and it surprises her that he would.

“Later,” she answers. 

The lights dance over the console and dim and rise above her, the same disconcerting mix of red and gold and blue. He’s watching her still, without staring this time, and waiting too. She watches his oddly elegant hands as they move over the controls. These things remain comfortably familiar.

“I missed you, you know,” she adds, finally.

He looks up and catches her eyes, holds a moment, and then smiles a little crookedly. Her lips twitch in response.

They are still not finished.


End file.
